Telecom Egypt and Zain Omantel plan a new high-capacity route

Telecom Egypt and Zain Omantel International (ZOI)  announced a strategic partnership to establish a  digital corridor connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Sea and Arabian Gulf.

The new infrastructure will stretch from Oman's Arabian Sea and Gulf shores to Egypt's Mediterranean coastline, incorporating a high fiber count and a combination of terrestrial and subsea segments. 

The terrestrial segments covering Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt offer  reliability and protection, while the subsea section directly linking Saudi Arabia and Egypt through the Red Sea features a high-capacity, repeaterless cable system. 

This collaboration will not only enhance the resiliency and reliability of end-to-end solutions for Telecom Egypt and ZOI's partners and customers but also extend the infrastructure to Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, and Jordan through ZOI's network and collaboration with licensed cable landing parties in each country. Furthermore, it presents an opportunity for subsea cable owners to reduce construction costs and improve latency, resilience, and market response times by connecting to this open access system. 

Mohamed Nasr, Managing Director and CEO at Telecom Egypt, commented: “We are excited to collaborate with ZOI on this strategic project; it’s a game-changer in the Eurasia route connectivity landscape. As we look for innovative ways to better serve our customers, we will consistently strive to provide a seamless international connectivity network and increase our diversity layers, without compromising quality, cost or speed. We will do this by leveraging on both Telecom Egypt’s established history in the subsea cables arena and its experienced and competent team.” 

 

Sohail Qadir, CEO at ZOI, commented: “We are delighted to partner with Telecom Egypt on such a groundbreaking project. ZOI was created to revolutionize the wholesale telecom scene and this is an example of what the future holds. We are facilitating the landing of subsea connections through our shareholders such as Omantel and Zain KSA being the licensees in those jurisdictions. This one-of-a-kind infrastructure will be expanded to most of ZOI’s network footprint to maximize the benefit to our group operations across the region. The value that this digital corridor will create is enormous and it will be widely realized in the region and beyond not only from a connectivity point of view, but also on technological, commercial and social levels.” END   

 

https://www.zainomantel.com 

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Orange powers AMITIE Subsea Cable with Infinera’s GX

Orange deployed Infinera’s GX Series-based ICE6 coherent solution on its new AMITIE subsea cable, which spans 6,800 km and connects the state of Massachusetts (USA), Le Porge (France) and Bude (UK). 

Orange powers fully resilient global connectivity capability along the world’s busiest route, using two state-of-the-art subsea mega cables, Dunant and AMITIE, to connect France and the U.S. Deploying Infinera’s  ICE6 technology on the GX Series Compact Modular Platform enables Orange to keep pace with future generations of optical transmission technologies while maintaining a high level of performance for the next 20 years. This deployment also significantly reduces Orange’s energy cost per megabit and minimizes its carbon footprint.

 

“We are pleased to integrate Infinera’s industry-leading technology for the first time on one of our key transatlantic routes and terrestrial backhaul. With this future-proof technology, Orange is well-positioned to continue to be a major player in the global wholesale market, developing our infrastructure to connect continents together and delivering a unique, high-performance, and robust solution to our customers,” said Aurélien Vigano, VP International Transmission Network at Orange.

“Infinera is delighted to partner with Orange to deliver our innovative ICE6 solution across Orange’s critical subsea and terrestrial backhaul routes, offering network operators, wholesale carriers, and enterprise customers resilient and reliable global connectivity capability,” said Nick Walden, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Infinera.

https://www.infinera.com/press-release/orange-deploys-infinera-gx-series-to-power-amitie-subsea-cable/

• With a total length of 6,800 km and 16 fiber pairs, and a maximum capacity of 400 Tbps, AMITIE connects Lynn near Boston (USA), Le Porge near Bordeaux (France) and Bude (England). In France, Orange oversees the French part of the cable, and is in charge of operating and maintaining the system's landing station. It provides all AMITIE cable partners with the terrestrial infrastructure required for its smooth operation, from the limit of French territorial waters to the new Equinix datacenter based in Bordeaux.
• Additional partners on the AMITIE cable include Aqua Comms, Meta, Microsoft, and Vodafone. The cable was built by Alcatel Submarine Networks.
• In January 2021, Orange announced ready-for-service status on the new Dunant cable system, which is a joint project with Google, and boasts 12 fibre pairs with over 30 Tbps of capacity each.

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Broadband Forum intros Automated Intelligence Management framework

The Broadband Forum has introduced two industry standards known as the Automated Intelligence Management (AIM) framework, aimed at leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and automation to enhance network services' quality and reliability. AIM has the potential to save service providers both costs and effort associated with scaling their networks. By reducing on-site maintenance and human intervention, it can proactively identify and address network faults before they impact the user's experience, ultimately improving operational efficiency. 

The AIM framework is seen as a solution to unlock new revenue streams and optimize network infrastructure, particularly beneficial for service providers that have had to increase their capital expenditure (CapEx) to expand their networks. 

Key points and benefits of the AIM framework:

• AIM utilizes AI, ML, and automation to enhance network operational efficiency and reduce operational expenditure (OpEx).
• It can anticipate and resolve network faults before they affect service quality, reducing the need for on-site maintenance.
• The framework offers potential cost savings and revenue generation for service providers.
• Two standards, TR-436 and TR-486, define the AIM framework and its interfaces, ensuring vendor interoperability.
• Use cases include home Wi-Fi network monitoring, network performance optimization, and automated traffic steering.
• AIM enables automated and intelligent network operations with minimal human intervention, improving user experience.
• It facilitates end-to-end root cause analysis, path degradation predictions, and customer experience assessments.

The Broadband Forum says its AIM framework represents a significant step forward in network management, providing service providers with the tools needed to deliver high-quality services efficiently and cost-effectively. 

“Service assurance with performance monitoring and automated traffic steering is an attractive proposition as it enables an automated and intelligent way to operate the network with minimal human intervention,” said Mauro Tilocca of TIM - Telecom Italia who also serves as the Broadband Forum Service Provider Action Council Chair. “The new specifications deliver an entire framework to empower network capabilities, via AI/ML-based recommendations. The AIM pipeline components can be implemented as virtualized functions in a cloud-native environment, allowing a high degree of reusability per modern DevOps and GitOps paradigms, as well as flexible and seamless deployments.”

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Arrcus Predictions 2024: AI's Impact on Network Infrastructure

For 2024, Shekar Ayyar, CEO from Arrcus, predicts:

- Distributed network infrastructure for effective AI inferencing at the edges. This is where the real value of AI lies, as customers are more interested in the results than the intricacies of model training.

- Multicloud networking with efficient management of egress costs. With more than one hyperscaler highway becoming a requirement, it's time to embrace multicloud networking.

- The need for large-scale data center infrastructure to deploy and train large AI models. Single data centers won't cut it anymore; efficient interconnects between multiple data centers and extending from data centers to the edges are the future.

https://youtu.be/syqxUQOwuiQ

Want to be involved our video series? Contact info@nextgeninfra.io

 Check out all 2024 Predictions from Industry Thought Leaders: https://ngi.fyi/predictions24ytx`

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Ericsson, T-Mobile and Qualcomm test 6-component carrier aggregation

Ericsson, T-Mobile and Qualcomm Technologies achieved download speeds beyond 3.6Gbps in a world’s first six-component carrier aggregation (6CC) using sub-6GHz spectrum on a live production 5G network.

5G carrier aggregation allows service providers like T-Mobile to combine multiple 5G channels (or carriers) to deliver greater speed and performance. In this test, the trio merged six 5G channels of mid-band spectrum – two channels of 2.5GHz Ultra Capacity 5G, two channels of Personal Communications Services (PCS) spectrum and two channels of Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum – creating an effective 245MHz 5G channel. That’s like taking six separate highways and turning them into a massive superhighway where traffic can zoom faster than before.

Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Business Area Networks at Ericsson, says: “This latest technology advancement with T-Mobile and Qualcomm Technologies comes as Ericsson continues to go beyond the bounds of its carrier aggregation journey. With this new milestone we have proven once again the versatility of our software innovation and how it helps our customers boost network capacity, coverage and performance.”

Ulf Ewaldsson, President of Technology at T-Mobile, says: “We are pushing the boundaries of wireless technology to offer our customers the best experience possible. With the first and largest 5G standalone network in the country, T-Mobile is the only mobile provider serving 10s of millions of customers to unleash new capabilities like 5G carrier aggregation nationwide, and I am so incredibly proud of our team for leading the way.”  

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/t-mobile-delivers-another-worlds-first-with-6-carrier-aggregation

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Nokia Federal Solutions gets underway

Nokia launched a new dedicated entity focused on delivering secure and innovative solutions to the U.S. federal government.

Nokia Federal Solutions (NFS) will leverage the company’s global expertise and technology portfolio underpinned by Nokia Bell Labs to address the critical needs of U.S. federal agencies across diverse missions.

The launch of NFS underscores Nokia’s long-standing commitment to the U.S. government. The company has been a trusted partner for decades, providing critical technology and services to various agencies. NFS’ focus will be to create solutions that meet the unique requirements of US Federal Agencies utilizing Nokia’s technology and product portfolio including IP Routing, Optical Networking, Microwave, 5G, Private Wireless and Tactical Private Wireless.

NFS brings together a team of experienced professionals both in commercial communications technology expertise and a deep understanding of the U.S. government’s unique requirements. The NFS initiative is further bolstered by the recent acquisition of the Fenix Group, Inc., a leading provider of secure tactical private wireless solutions for defense.

Mike Loomis, President of Nokia Federal Solutions, said: “The U.S. government faces complex communications challenges in today’s interconnected world. With Nokia Federal Solutions, we are strengthening our commitment to support the US Government by investing in a dedicated entity to provide the technology, expertise, and local presence needed to help U.S. federal agencies achieve their mission goals. We are investing to become the U.S. Government's trusted partner for 5G mission-ready solutions.”

https://www.nokia.com

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